These Chicken Spiedies with Garlic Sauce are marinated in a lemon, olive oil and herb marinade, grilled and served over Italian rolls, then drizzled with a delicious garlic sauce. Simple, quick and undeniably delicious.
Let me tell you about spiedies. First, it’s a cool name. What’d you have for lunch? Oh well I had marinated chicken spiedies with garlic sauce, doesn’t that just sound drool worthy all on its own?
Spiedies originated in Binghamton, New York and am I ever glad that someone invented them because they’re incredible. Apparently there is even a Spiedie Fest every year, who knew?
What Are Spiedies?
Basically, spiedies are marinated cubes of lamb, chicken or beef, grilled and served on soft Italian bread, drizzled with marinade. I went with chicken here, which I marinated in a simple olive oil, lemon and herb marinade for at least a couple hours.
All you have to do is grill the chicken on skewers and then serve them in these Italian rolls. I also buttered and grilled my rolls, because you simply must. But that wasn’t enough for me, I thought the sandwiches were going to be a bit dry, and then I remembered my garlic sauce that I made with chicken shawarma and thought it would go great with this. I was right, of course.
Ingredients
Marinade
- Olive oil – We want a nice neutral tasting oil to cook our chicken down in.
- Lemon juice – Fresh is best! We’re using the juice from 2 lemons.
- Seasoning – Salt and pepper.
- Herbs – Fresh chopped up parsley and cilantro.
Garlic sauce
- Oil – A nice neutral tasting vegetable oil like canola.
- Garlic – Use as much or little as you like.
- Lemon juice – Fresh as always, we’re using quite a bit of juice for this sauce.
- Egg – Just egg white, if you’d rather not include raw egg I’ve included a section below detailing how to make a yogurt based sauce instead.
- Seasoning – Just salt for this sauce.
Spiedies
- Rolls – Fluffy white Italian rolls, feel free to pick up some nice stuff to stuff full of chicken.
- Butter – Salted or unsalted but I usually prefer to use unsalted so I can control the sodium content of our dish.
- Chicken – I used chicken breasts today and I find that breasts are perfect for these spiedies. Boneless skinless thighs can be used as well.
How To Make Chicken Spiedies with Garlic Sauce
Garlic Sauce
- Combine the sauce: Add all the ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth, it should take 1 to 2 minutes. This recipe will make about 1 1/2 cups of sauce, refrigerate leftover sauce.
Spiedies
- Marinate the chicken: In a small bowl whisk together the marinade ingredients. Place the chicken in a ziploc bag and pour the marinade over the chicken, seal the bag, toss to combine. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours up to overnight.
- Prepare the chicken: When ready to cook turn on your grill to medium high heat. Clean and oil the grill. Cut the rolls lengthwise and brush the inside of the roll generously with butter. Thread the chicken on 4 skewers, making sure to divide the meat equally among the skewers.
- Grill the chicken on all sides, about 3 minutes per side, until chicken is cooked and starts to brown. Place the rolls on the grill and let them grill for about 2 minutes or until the bread starts to brown.
- Assemble the sandwiches: In each roll lay a grilled skewer inside. Gripping the roll at the bottom, carefully slide the skewer off, leaving meat in the bread. Drizzle generously with the garlic sauce.
Egg Free Garlic Sauce
Regarding raw eggs, some fear that they may contain Salmonella which can cause food poisoning. However, the risk of an egg being contaminated is quite low. This used to be a problem over 20 years ago, but since then improvements have been made in the processing of eggs, leading to fewer Salmonella cases.
If you’re looking to make a raw egg free garlic sauce, I’ve got an easy sauce here for you that is just as delicious although less authentic.
- Combine: Lemon juice, plain yogurt (either Greek or regular), garlic, and salt.
You can also just omit the egg white and add your vegetable oil bit by bit to the blender as it blends till it has the consistency of mayonnaise.
How To Serve
There are lots of ways you can play around with your delicious dish, feel free to have some fun with it!
VEGGIES
- Sliced tomato and cucumber
- Feel free to add some crunchy lettuce, I like to add lots of romaine.
- Pickled veggies are delicious with this dish!
SALADS
- Greek salad
- Mediterranean Couscous Salad
- A super easy cabbage salad made from: julienne cabbage, olive oil, lemon juice, mint, tomatoes, and some vinegar.
STARCHES
- Couscous Pilaf With Sautéed Mushrooms
- Any type of rice you’d like.
Can I Make This Dish Ahead?
Yes you can! This dish stores in the fridge or freezer quite well.
CHICKEN
The Chicken Spiedies will last in the fridge in an air tight container for 3 – 4 days. If you’d like to freeze this dish I recommend freezing the chicken in the bag with the marinade while still raw, then when it defrosts it will marinate and you can skewer it and pop it on the grill from there!
GARLIC SAUCE
You can store this homemade garlic sauce for up to 2 weeks in the fridge in an airtight container. I don’t recommend freezing this sauce as it is similar to a homemade mayo which separates and becomes unusable after thawing.
More Must Try Delicious Recipes:
- Chicken Marsala
- Chicken and Mushrooms in Creamy Dill Sauce
- Lemon Chicken Piccata
- Lemon Pepper Chicken
- Chicken Francese
- Coq Au Vin
- Chicken in White Wine Sauce with Mushrooms
- Honey Garlic Chicken
- Spicy Brazilian Coconut Chicken
- Chicken Meatball Noodle Soup
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Marinated Chicken Spiedies with Garlic Sauce
Ingredients
- 3 large chicken breasts cut into cubes
- 4 Italian rolls
- 2 tbsp butter melted
Marinade Ingredients
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1/4 cup fresh cilantro chopped
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
Garlic sauce
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1/3 cup lemon juice
- 6 cloves garlic peeled
- 1 egg white*
- 1 tsp salt
Instructions
Garlic Sauce
- Add all the ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth, it should take 1 to 2 minutes. This recipe will make about 1 1/2 cups of sauce, refrigerate leftover sauce.
Spiedies
- In a small bowl whisk together the marinade ingredients. Place the chicken in a ziploc bag and pour the marinade over the chicken, seal the bag, toss to combine. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours up to overnight.
- When ready to cook turn on your grill to medium high heat. Clean and oil the grill.
- Cut the rolls lengthwise and brush the inside of the roll generously with butter.
- Thread the chicken on 4 skewers, making sure to divide the meat equally among the skewers.
- Grill the chicken on all sides, about 3 minutes per side, until chicken is cooked and starts to brown. Place the rolls on the grill and let them grill for about 2 minutes or until the bread starts to brown.
- In each roll lay a grilled skewer inside. Gripping the roll at the bottom, carefully slide skewer off, leaving meat in the bread. Drizzle generously with the garlic sauce.
Recipe Notes
- Prep time does not include time for marinating chicken.
- *If you don’t want to use raw egg whites in the garlic sauce, you can omit it, just add the oil little by little to the blender until it thickens and should have the consistency of mayonnaise.
- The Chicken Spiedies will last in the fridge in an air tight container for 3 – 4 days. If you’d like to freeze this dish I recommend freezing the chicken in the bag with the marinade while still raw, then when it defrosts it will marinate and you can skewer it and pop it on the grill from there!
- You can store this homemade garlic sauce for up to 2 weeks in the fridge in an airtight container. I don’t recommend freezing this sauce as it is similar to a homemade mayo which separates and becomes unusable after thawing.
- Please keep in mind that nutritional information is a rough estimate and can vary greatly based on products used.
This was delicious & we will be making it again! We added extra garlic cloves to the sauce as we don’t think you can have too much garlic 🙂
OMG!!! I’ve made Spiedies for years. This one, with the garlic sauce? YUM!!! Thank you!!
Love this recipe, Jo, as I have all of yours that I’ve tried…
Just a suggestion – in regards to uncooked egg whites in the sauce – if you’re worried about salmonella, simply use egg whites – pasteurized egg whites are available in cartons in the dairy section of most grocery stores – they’re inexpensive and safe when you need egg whites but not the yummy yolks!
That’s right! 🙂
One more thing…
In the post body it mentions garlic in the marinade ingredients, but there’s no mention of it in the ingredients list or the instructions on the recipe card – Now I erred to the side of garlic (as I always do) and added about four minced cloves to the marinade as well. But which is it supposed to be?
I made vegetable skewers to go with these (zucchini, yellow squash, onion, mushrooms, bell peppers and grape tomatoes) and doubled the sauce for them. Perfect summer dinner.
Forgot to rate it before, too…
Thanks again!
Thanks for that, fixed it, there is no garlic in the marinade, but then who am I kidding. You can add garlic to anything!
I tried your Marinated Chicken Spiedies with Garlic Sauce but I realized that if I add chili sauce, it’s more delicious, and in my restaurant, I have already lots of dishes in the menu but I want to update the menu list and after a long search I got perfect dish for my restaurant, in future I will introduce into my New Sham Baltimore restaurant.
Husband and I loved this recipe. However, I did not have skewers nor an outdoor grill, but everything else was great. Perfect Jo
I’m from Vestal, NY, a suburb of Binghamton and yes, I grew up with these. My mom always made them with lamb (pretty much the most popular meat in our area) and in the winter we’d spit the marinated lamb and cook it over the wood in the fireplace. Yum! Your recipe is pretty close to the one I grew up with. Thanks for sharing this great recipe on your blog for others to enjoy!
So happy to hear this, and I’m glad the recipe is close to what you remember. 🙂
its waaay too cold to grill. Can the chicken be grilled on a grill pan? If so how would that work? More time because it is a grill pan?
Absolutely! Depends how hot your grill pan is, it might take a couple minutes longer, but shouldn’t take too much longer. You could even just cook the chicken cubes in a skillet.
Great recipe, but I’m partial to lamb (according to “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, lamb is a vegetarian item, so I guess that makes my preference vegetarian, lol).
Amazed to see this recipe here. I’m from Vestal, NY, a suburb of Binghamton and I grew up eating these made by my mother. Her twist on it in the winter (not a griller) was to put the meat on hotdog spits and cook in the fireplace. Different, right?
Yes, snowy high school football games, freezing in my wool band uniform and holding a metal flute… those were the days. I now live in SoCal…
In the Binghamton area we just make up extra marinade, heat it up, and serve to drizzle over the cooked meat. We are pretty basic, purist types…
Thanks again for the nod to the Binghamton area.
My pleasure, Lyn! So glad you enjoyed this and that I took you down memory lane. 🙂
This is SO delicious and so easy to make!
I made these for dinner and wow! The sauce is amazing! I can’t wait to put it on everything.
My sauce ended up like a homemade mayonnaise because I used the nutribullet to blend it. I may never buy commercial mayo again! Oh and I cooked the chicken on a cast iron griddle on the stove. The chicken was incredibly tender and flavorful even though it only marinated for 30 minutes.
Have you tried baking these instead of grilling? Our weather has just turned a bit frigid for me…
Same here! You could even cook this chicken on the stove top in a skillet, but yes you could bake them as well, I would probably bake them for about 20 min at 400 F degrees, but do check them and make sure they are cooked through.
Theses were great! I halved the garlic sauce and still had plenty. I used pasteurized egg so I didn’t have to worry about using the raw egg. Thanks for the recipe
So glad you tried this recipe and made it work for you. Thanks for the five star rating…
Just saw this great recipe!!! Definitely going to try making it for lunch. I think my kids will love it. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks
Hi! I cannot wait to try these! They look delicious. I was wondering if you think I could substitute the oil in the garlic sauce with coconut oil (or half coconut/half vegetable oil)?
Absolutely. Go for it!